Lost Amongst Our Winnings
by INMH
Summary: For the love bingo challenge, WILD CARD prompt "Comfort". Following Castiel's strike against Raphael, an incident with Rachel sets a grim tone for the war in heaven. Could be interpreted as sibling or friendship love, or pre-Castiel/Rachel.


Lost Amongst Our Winnings

**Rating:** PG-13/T

**Genre:** Drama/Angst

**Summary:** For the love_bingo challenge, WILD CARD prompt "Comfort". Almost immediately following Castiel's strike against Raphael, an incident with Rachel sets a grim tone for the war in heaven. Could be interpreted as sibling or friendship love, or pre-Castiel/Rachel.

**Author's Note:** So… I started this. Then, with my squirrel-like attention span, I forgot it. Then I read Nancy T.'s LOVELY story 'Requiem For Rachel' on FFnet, and I thought "Hey! Don't I have a story that covers Rachel's first experiences in a human vessel? I SHOULD PROBABLY GO WORK ON THAT."

SO I DID.

And then I saw a chipmunk.

…A few months later, here we are. I was searching for an unfinished story to use for a fill for love_bingo, and I found this. IT HAS MEANING!

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Supernatural. It belongs to Eric Kripke. The title comes from the song "O Children", by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

()()

When Rachel delayed in returning to heaven following the possession of her vessel, Castiel knew something was wrong.

Dean would call it his 'gut', a human's metaphor for the intuitive sense that something was wrong. Castiel wasn't certain just how accurate these accounts were of 'gut feelings' actually being correct: Humans had a problem with admitting when they were wrong, and to have a 'gut feeling' that expanded into nothing would not be something they would broadcast.

Regardless, something felt wrong.

Rachel had said that her vessel was calling her, accepting her proposal, and that she would return as soon as she was able, most likely in a matter of minutes.

Half an hour had passed, and it was then that Castiel decided he wasn't going to wait any longer.

Rachel's intended vessel, a woman by the name of Kate Green, lived in Sacramento and taught elementary school children. Rachel had not said as much, but as it was roundabout 3:00 in the afternoon, Castiel imagined that the children had only just been released from school and that Kate would have been within a reasonable proximity of the school when she called to Rachel.

Castiel landed on the school's lawn. The school was just outside the city limits, in a slightly wooded area. Children with brightly colored backpacks and lunchboxes were walking home or waiting for their parents nearby, and Castiel was careful to keep himself hidden from them. Sam had warned him some time ago that adults tended to become uneasy when strange men watched children from a distance (Castiel, with his particularly piercing stare, was aware how someone might be alarmed of him and took this advice seriously).

He looked around. All he could see were children. Rachel would have easily recognized the signs of another angel's arrival- disruption of phone and computer activity, lights flashing or exploding- and would have located and greeted him by now if she was close at hand. The frown on Castiel's face deepened.

Then he heard-

"-that thing was earlier, did you see it?"

"The lights? Probably just some kids setting off fireworks or something."

"They _did_ come from the direction of the high school."

"No sirens?"

"No."

Castiel's mouth went dry, and that gut feeling suddenly felt a lot heavier.

The two women that had been talking had been looking right in Castiel's direction, but over his head towards the small wooded area off behind the school. He turned to look, and though he didn't see or hear anything suspicious, it was certainly worth an investigation. It wasn't as though he had any other leads to follow.

In the blink of an eye, Castiel was in what he estimated to be the center of the woods, surrounded by blue oaks, bushes and other forest debris. He heard birds chirping, twigs snapping, the wind blowing the leaves on the trees and the barest, softest sound of water running.

However, those all fell to the wayside as he detected the unmistakable feeling of dying grace in the air around him. Castiel's sword descended from inside his sleeve, and he was immediately on guard. His dread grew as the scenarios played in his head: Rachel being caught by one of Raphael's followers and killed in a fight. He had never dreamed she would die so early in this war, she was an excellent fighter, and he cautiously began to search, trying and failing to steel himself for the loss of another dear sibling, this time a friend closer than others-

Castiel found Rachel and thought his fears had come true.

It was only upon closer inspection that he heaved a sigh of relief.

Rachel was curled up on the ground, motionless, silent except for soft, shaky breath that made her back rise and fall almost unnoticeably. There were three dead angels around her, the grass matted in some places with blood; two of them, males, were face-down, and Castiel thought he might have recognized the third, a woman, but at the moment he was more concerned with Rachel.

He went to her, knelt down and set his sword aside, laying his hand on her shoulder. "Rachel? Rachel? Are you all right?"

Rachel turned her head away from him, towards the ground.

"Are you hurt?" There was blood on her hands and staining the light blue shirt that rightfully belonged to Kate Green, but he could not see any apparent injuries. Whether she was or not, Rachel did not answer, though Castiel thought he might have heard a slightly distressed sound from her now human mouth.

This was odd. Rachel was alive and presumably unharmed. She was no stranger to battle, to killing, not even to killing their own brothers and sisters (The defectors in Lucifer's wake had made sibling-killers of them all). Castiel had absolutely no idea why she would be, evidently, so affected by this particular set of killings.

With Rachel unresponsive, Castiel turned his attention to the dead angels, studying the woman, a middle-aged blonde in a blue blouse and beige slacks. She _did_ look familiar, now that he looked closer, almost like-

Oh.

Castiel quietly stood up and turned over the two males, in turn recognizing them: Sachiel and Bahram. The woman was Simiel. Rachel had been their instructor, their teacher in heaven (a fact that played a significant role in Rachel's choice of vessel).

There were 21 Generations of angels in the Host, the 21st consisting solely of the archangels and going down from there, about 1,000 years separating each generation. Castiel and Rachel were 16th Generation; young, relatively speaking, but not quite green. Balthazar and Tabris were the 12th Generation; Anna had been in the 13th, Zachariah the 7th, Joshua the 2nd, and so on.

Currently, anyone 19th Generation or younger was considered a newbie, a greenhorn, a trainee. These three, Rachel's students, had been 20th Generation, still being trained for heavy combat. The fact that they were so young and, comparatively, weaker than their older brothers and sisters explained why the implosion of their grace had not been on a larger scale (which would have attracted considerably more attention from any and all humans in the area).

Castiel felt something ugly and hot burn in his throat. Rachel would not have killed these students of hers for anything short of self-defense. They had attacked her. Her pupils had loved her, and would not have easily brought themselves to harm her, nor would they have actually chosen to be the ones to hurt her. That meant that Raphael had probably sent them to change Rachel's loyalties and, if they failed, to kill her.

Raphael was a cruel, cruel bastard, and Castiel burned for the opportunity to shove a sword through his throat.

Right now, though, the anger would have to wait. He hadn't seen Rachel in such a state in… Actually, Castiel wasn't sure he'd ever seen Rachel like this. Ever. She was very strong. And the situation they found themselves in- A civil war that they had a strong likelihood of losing- had probably put her into the kind of frame of mind that would make an incident like this the 'last straw', as humans said.

Castiel knelt beside his friend once more. "Rachel," He said softly. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry you had to do this." He slid his hands around her shoulders and gave a little tug. "But we need to go. Raphael will be waiting for them to come back, and when they don't, he might send reinforcements."

There was a long moment, but then Rachel rolled onto her hands and knees and pushed herself up. Kate Green had long, blonde hair, and Rachel seemed to be making sure that it was hiding her face. Castiel was almost hurt: He and Rachel were friends, old friends, and the idea that she was hiding from him stung. He went to touch her arm again, but she swatted at his hands and got to her feet, almost immediately turning her back to him.

"Rachel, please."

"I-" He was taken aback at how softer her voice was, channeled through her vessel. It sounded strange; her true voice was much stronger. "I didn't mean to."

"I know. I know you would never. You cared for them."

"Simiel looked so upset."

"Rachel-"

"Bahram too."

"Rachel, wait a-"

"Sachiel just looked angry, he called me a traitor and I-" Rachel's human lungs contracted and expanded wildly, rapidly, and Castiel recognized it as hyperventilation. It wasn't the physical act that he was concerned about (A human would pass out, but Rachel did not strictly need air to stay conscious or alive), but rather the emotional implications it conveyed.

Rachel was cracking, panicking. All in all, it wasn't untypical for some angels to be hit a little harder by the wide range of human emotions available to them. This accompanied by the swiftly changing situation in heaven and the personally awful thing that she had just been forced to do left Castiel alarmed on his own for her.

Castiel debated silently, forcefully in his head, remembering that what he was considering was not a norm for his species and that it might not be received well. But tentatively, flinching at the possibility of it going badly, Castiel edged forward and slowly embraced Rachel. He took a breath of his own, and her hair smelled like some kind of shampoo meant to have a generic fruit smell. He could still hear her gasping, but it was starting to taper off. Maybe there was something to hugging after all.  
>It felt a little awkward, as Rachel was not actually returning the embrace. He couldn't yet tell if that was because she didn't like it or, perhaps, if she was still in too much of a panic to reciprocate it. Angels did not hug- They had a different sense of personal space than humans, given that their true forms were composed quite differently than a human body. But Castiel had been amongst humans for a long time, and when a human was hurting emotionally, it was common practice to embrace them.<p>

She still wasn't hugging back, and Castiel was beginning to feel the kind of awkwardness that filled the room whenever he did or said something that Sam and Dean didn't "get", and so he started to pull away from her, already trying to think of something to say to diffuse the discomfort. But as his arms started to loosen and he began to pull back, Rachel's arms suddenly, hesitantly, came up to light wrap around his back. Her head came to rest on his shoulder.

Castiel sighed in relief, because it had destroyed that awkwardness magnificently, and he reached up and patted her back. "Do you feel any better?"

Rachel sniffed again, but her voice was entirely steady when she answered. "…Not much."

"It's not supposed to be a cure-all."

"Good."

She pulled back, and though he could still see grief etched into her face, Rachel looked more normal than before. She was still shaken, and as strong as she was, Castiel despised Raphael all the more for causing her such pain. Slowly, after another moment of hesitation, wondering if this was appropriate, he reached up and cupped Rachel's cheek and neck with a hand.

"Normally I don't advocate vengeance, Rachel," He began. "But… If anyone had reason to want to fight Raphael and end him, it would be you." Rachel's expression hardened.

"Is it so wrong that I want to?"

There was maybe the barest touch of facetiousness, but while her tone was cold, Castiel could tell that she was asking him a serious question. He ran his thumb over her cheek, contemplating.

"No. I don't think so." He paused, wondering how Dean or Sam would word this. "…We need to stop Raphael regardless of what our personal feelings are. But having something to drive us might make us stronger."

"Wrath."

"Or love for your students."

At that, Rachel's expression crumpled again. Castiel made a note to wait a while before mentioning Bahram, Simiel or Sachiel in front of her again. His hand slid from her face down to her hand, which he took and lightly pulled on. "We need to leave, Rachel."

Rachel didn't speak, but then her hand tightened on his. "All right."

Castiel gave her a small, warm smile. "Things will get better."  
>"And how do you know that?"<p>

"Because I know."

Rachel stared at him for a long moment, and then finally managed a small, small smile in return.

"I believe you."

-End

…It is a testament to my supreme geek-hood that I put some very significant consideration into that whole angel-generation thing.

FOR THE RECORD: As far as what we saw of Rachel in The Man Who Would Be King, I was under the impression that, given angels are blinding lights in their true forms with voices that can shatter glass, any angels Castiel encountered in heaven were in their 'true forms' unless we knew otherwise (Raphael and Castiel), and only looked the way they did for the sake of the audience.

My evidence for this, in particular, is Rachel, since she was in a suit originally and then we see her in typical clothing, and angels don't seem to change clothes for any other reason. Cas certainly hasn't (Though if he turns up in a white suit with a red rose at any point during the remainder of the show, I think it'll be the end of me).


End file.
